Twitter is testing a small UI change that makes it a bit more convenient – and likely – that someone will follow a person who is engaging with them on Twitter.

While participating in the #socialchat on Twitter Monday night, I noticed that when viewing retweets and @jenstar replies to me, that next to the usual reply, retweet and favorite buttons was a new person icon with a + next to it, to easily follow that person without having to view their profile first.

It shows when you are not following the person who is engaging with you, by either @ replying or by tagging.

After you click the icon to follow the person, Twitter highlights it with a check mark to show you have successfully followed that person.

This is a test that Twitter is running as I checked multiple Twitter accounts, and this is the only one that currently has this new feature displaying.

It is a nice feature, and should encourage people to follow new people.  I know there have been times I have engaged with people on Twitter, thinking I followed them when I didn’t.  And it saves that extra click on someone’s profile to discover whether that person is followed or not.

I also noticed that it is showing up on searches as well.  This could make it extremely convenient to follow people talking around a specific hashtag, especially those at a conference.

Here is an example of it showing up in search.